Seth L. Sanders is a fan of rocks, water, and trees who studied at Harvard, Hebrew University, and Johns Hopkins before finding his real home in Nova Scotia. He is the McLeod Chair of Classics here and Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at UC Davis.
Research Interests
He is an expert in the languages and cultures of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, from Hebrew and Aramaic to Canaanite and Babylonian as well as a fan of Jewish liturgy, beat and avant-garde literature, and doom metal. He has edited or coedited studies of the cuneiform texts from Israel and Palestine, writing in the ancient Near East, and ancient Jewish sciences, as well as writing two books, The Invention of Hebrew and From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon. His current work, supported by the NEH and the Guggenheim Foundation, rethinks the composition of the Hebrew Bible, including the first open-access presentation of its building blocks at pentateuch.digital. He is interested in ancient and modern poetic and ritual performance of religious texts from The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice to Black Sabbath.
